Where the green grass grows.

I haven't been sleeping. I can't slow my thoughts long enough to make peace with the day. I have been so riddled with indifference; or maybe the feelings that I am having are just battling for dominance. As a result, I am left with only apathy and isolation. Living inside of my head has proven itself to be a detriment to my well being - but I haven't figured out how to stop the commotion. I haven't found the switch. It must be hidden somewhere beneath my logical self, and I rarely waste my time digging through those parts. So the only possible outcome of my madness is self-destruction. I have these moments of complete insanity; I waste too much time trying to decipher the life around me. Every breath has meaning, every moment holds value. Trying to crack the code of God is an impossibility - but I still take a stab at it every now and then.

So after accepting defeat, I think about home. When I have exhausted all internal quarrels, and when I have burned through my last wick, I find the only stable tranquility left - home. I grew up between two small towns, so "home" is a medley of farmland expanding the belly of eastern Washington. From Moses Lake to Walla Walla, my roots run deep. I am the farmer's daughter, the cowboy's little girl. I am that scrawny little blue eyed gal chasing butterflies in the alfalfa fields. Those fields that stretch from horizon east to sunset west - the fields that blanket the valley in the familiar scent of summer: the blooming flora fused with late august rain. If I ever close my eyes, and indulge in a brief moment of nostalgia, I can still smell the sweetness of those fields. Like a conch, memories flood and take me back to that heartland. That home. The place where the sun meets the earth and explodes into a brilliant, prismatic burst of color. The place where God and nature and man bleed in unison, in perfect harmony.

I spent my youth conquering that farm. I had an expansive 250 acres at my fingertips and I took complete advantage of my surroundings. I swam in irrigation canals, and shot coyotes with paintball guns. I constructed forts between the trunks of pine trees, and hosted tea parties in vacant chicken coops. My imagination was seizing; there was no fantasy that couldn't be recreated. I utilized my resources - the land and the earth and the air - and created excitement from the ordinary. The magic of summertime - the freedom of long evenings on an enormous playground - became the definition of my childhood. Every solid, wholesome memory I have stored can be attributed to that farm and my existence there. Life in rural America is similar to living beneath a snow globe: your environment is fantastical, and yet nothing seems to exist beyond the perimeters of alfalfa seeded land.

I miss that age. The pace was slower, the worries were few, my life was different. I imagined my world and breathed life into at the start of every summer day. I believed that nothing existed beyond the walls of my land. I believed in the beauty of my world, and the people that inhabited it. Farming is a way of life, a culture. It is a love affair with the benefits of the land - a tender kiss upon the fruits of nature. It is an appreciation and understanding of hard work. It is the ability to take nothing and mold it into something. It is me, a homegrown country girl. But the farmer's daughter, and the cowboy's little girl grew up. I left to conquer the world; I left to deepen my footprints on this earth. I put use to my wild imagination and concluded that it could reach beyond what was in front of me. I wanted everything and settled for nothing - I still have that ambition. My roots extend deep into the Columbia Valley, and when my world becomes distorted I will still find myself escaping to those fields. The code of God is written in the earth - I find comfort in this.

"Dear Jesse, as the moon lingers a moment over the bitterroots, before its descent into the invisible, my mind is filled with song. I find I am humming softly; not to the music, but something else; some place else; a place remembered; a field of grass where no one seemed to have been; except a deer; and the memory is strengthened by the feeling of you, dancing in my awkward arms." - Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It